


A Jedi's Final Breath

by fridgetax



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:13:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23225356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fridgetax/pseuds/fridgetax
Summary: Tel'Viir Vaniir is on a mission to find and destroy remaining Sith artifacts after the collapse of the Empire. While searching an ancient Sith temple for her next target, she stumbles upon something much older than the holocron she is looking for. What awaits her in the darkness? Read and find out.





	A Jedi's Final Breath

She could feel it near. Opening her eyes, Tel moved to follow where her senses were leading her. She walked carefully through the chiseled halls of the temple, sweeping the room with a blue shoto saber and taking in the glyphs carved into the orange, cracked, rock walls. The floor was smooth and dusty, with splotches of gray paint smeared across every surface. _The holocron I’m looking for must be just a little deeper within the pyramid,_ she thought to herself.

“Doing ok, Six?” Tel chirped through the cloth mask that was wrapped around her nose and mouth.

A small, black droid beeped back cheerfully from over her shoulder.

The droid hung onto the back of the shoulder of her short jacket with tiny frontal claws and wide clips attached to extendable legs. It rotated its shiny, domed head, adjusting its ocular module to record the markings on the wall. SVL-6 was an Imperial surveillance droid, and didn’t possess the database to decipher the ancient glyphs, but he could record them for Tel’Viir to study later.

Tel roamed the halls of the Sith temple, inching deeper and deeper into its core. Eventually, she reached a dead-end. Lightly sensing the presence of the dark side, she paused in the middle of the room.

”I’m gonna take a break here. Watch my back, Six?” Tel asked as she sat down.

SVL-6 whistled assuringly in Binary.

Tel folded her legs into a criss-cross shape, laid her hands on her knees, and settled into a comfortable pose on the floor of the carved room. She slowly breathed in and out, relaxing herself and channeling her power through a mental conduit. Seeing through the force, she visualized the Sith artifact right in front of her. The holocron was right before her, so close she could reach out and touch it. It was beautiful, and glistened like a jewel. Red and orange light danced in the small glass pyramid inside her mind. From the corners of her vision, gray smoke gradually clouded her sight, eclipsing the holocron.

Opening her eyes again, Tel stumbled in her concentration. She was close enough to touch it. Feel it. Resisting the dark side was never her forte. She would always rather give in, but she had responsibility now. Her seven year old daughter, Andromeda, was waiting back home with her father, Luke, at the school. Tel knew her daughter would be carefully awaiting her arrival. She knew her dangerous excursions were hard on her. Tel always struggled trying to strike a balance between it all. _I better have a good story for her, for when I get back._ Recentering her focus, she got up off the floor and brushed the fine dust off her tan, cloth pants.

“Kriff, it’s dusty in here,” she huffed. “You are lucky you’re a droid, Six. So how about it? Can you find any cavities in the walls?”

Looking over his master’s shoulder, SVL-6 emitted a whirring noise as it rotated its head once again. He adjusted his ocular module and a dim red light flickered from a small tube attached to the underside of the black dome. He scanned the cracked walls of the chamber and detected a narrow enclave tucked behind the wall in front of them. Six beeped assertively and turned off his scanning module.

“Right there?” -Tel stuck her finger out, pointing to the carved wall in front of her- “Well isn’t that convenient.”

She walked toward the glyph-covered, cracked surface and ran her hand over the writing.

“Stay back, Six, this could get messy.”

SVL-6 shifted down the back of Tel’s jacket, hiding behind her body. Tel’Viir took a couple steps back. Keeping her eyes trained on the orange stone before her, she shoved her hand forward. BOOM! In a split second, a central fraction of the wall in front of her exploded. Rock flew past Tel’s outstretched arm and figure, and struck the other sides of the room around her. When the dust settled, the narrow enclave was apparent. The chamber was thick with ancient air that had been trapped behind the walls for millenia. Tel began to cough. In her coughing fit, she pulled the cloth that covered her nose and mouth down around her neck in an attempt to increase her air intake.

SVL-6 hummed in concern.

“No, I’m fine,” Tel coughed and sputtered. “I’ll be fine, Six, thank you. You better get down, though. The holocron could react unpredictably… you know how these things go.”

SVL-6 hopped off the back of his master’s jacket. He turned around from his place on the floor, adjusted his ocular module, and began recording her. She crept towards the enclave, searching the force for the artifact’s signature again. Focusing once more on the holocron’s dark presence, she reached into the hole in the wall. She moved her face closer in, holding up her saber to search the darkness. The surface of the enclave was smeared with the same gray paint that painted the halls of the temple.

Sphht! Tel flinched and blinked rapidly. She felt a damp spritz of moisture on her face. _Bizzare. I can’t believe there is water down here after being bare for so long. Must have been trapped in the rock..._ Tel wiped her face with the cloth around her neck and held up her shoto once more.

Something glimmered in the enclave. It had a shine akin to a red diamond. A ruby. The holocron. It had appeared in the wall. The artifact shone with the same red and orange light as it had in Tel’s vision. She reached forward and plucked the pyramid from the destroyed face of rock. Holding the holocron out in front of her, she deactivated her saber, holstered it, and spun around to show SVL-6. She concentrated on the piece of Sith technology in her hand, willing it to open.

The holocron sparkled and floated an inch above her palm. It rotated in its whole and the four corners of its structure turned on their respective faces of the centerpiece. It spoke in an other-worldly and menacing voice, communicating only in an ancient Sith tongue. It spoke of a celestial being, an entity called the Mnggal-Mnggal. A mysteriously sentient, gray goo that took hold of every living thing in sight. That the death of everyone it touched was certain to occur within a single sunset, when the Mnggal-Mnggal clutched the will of its victim, and used them as its own. It told of the fall of a Sith temple, and how all life on the planet was killed. It spoke only one name. Platos. _It can’t be._

Tell felt her face with her hand again. She looked down and noticed the color of the moisture on her skin. It was an ugly, murky, menacing gray. Her fingers began to shake. Fear crept across her skin and seeped into her heart. She started to feel horrifically sick.

“Six, I’ve made a horrible mistake. We have to get back to the ship. Now.” Tel ordered, her voice becoming increasingly unstable. She looked down at her droid, “You need to take a message back to Luke. You are going to go without me, and you will not come back.”

She snatched the holocron from the air and fled the chamber, pausing for SVL-6 to snag her boot laces as she passed him, fixing himself to her shoe. Tel ran with the Sith artifact in hand, all the way up and out of the massive orange, stone pyramid. They passed swaths of Sith texts and glyphs carved upon the wall, each and every one saved in SVL-6’s memory bank.

When they hit the surface, the pair were met with Platos’ magnificent sunset. A smelted sky of red and orange, much like the signature light of the Sith holocron that was hidden from that very sun for so many millenia. Eclipsing the molten atmosphere was a classic-looking blue and white U-Wing. Tel ran toward it with her droid still hanging onto her boot by the laces.

Upon reaching the craft, she noticed a small, dark-haired figure that appeared in the doorway. A child. _Andromeda._

“Andy what are you doing here?!” Tel cried out, skidding to a halt a few meters from the ramp. “Darling, you can’t be here now. I told you I would be back soon. You aren’t allowed to stow away like this!”

The little girl clutched a doll made in the likeness of a fathier. She whimpered cautiously, “I just wanted to go with you… I didn’t know…” Andromeda started to cry, a single tear threatening to leave her hazel eye. She moved to walk down the ramp.

“Stop! Andy don’t take another step!” Tel ran her hand against her forehead. Her fingers slipped into her hair and grabbed a fistful of brown and white strands. She noticed the startled, afraid look in her child’s expression. “Okay, it’s okay Andy.” She took a shaken breath. “Six, go plug in the auto coordinates to take Andy back home.”

SVL-6 whistled an affirmation and released his grip on his master’s boot laces. He skipped his way across the planet’s rocky surface, turned around, and looked back up at Tel. The pair looked at each other, sharing an understanding of what needed to happen. They had spent so many years together, but everything has to end someday. The droid turned back around and hopped his way up the ramp and into the ship.

Tel returned her focus to her daughter that stood at the very top of the long ramp. “Andy you have to listen to me very carefully. I have to stay here. Six will take you back to daddy, but you have to promise me you will not come back. Do you understand? I love you so much, darling.”

Andromeda hesitated to run down to her mother, wanting to feel her embrace but held back by fear and confusion. “Mummy… are you sick? Your face looks kinda yucky…”

Tel saw the corruption within her mind. She knew there wasn’t much time left. “Six!” she shouted into the ship. “Time to go!”

The U-Wing started its closing program. Steam shot out of the hull from out of multiple valves on both sides of the boarding ramp. Andy started to cry for her mother. As the ramp started to fold and slide, she watched her mother standing outside the ship.

Tel felt her face with her hand. Her skin was dry. She scratched at it, releasing a liquidy gray ooze from her pores. She heard her daughter screaming for her from the top of the closing ramp. Tel watched the U-Wing seal completely, liftoff, and fly away.

She dropped to her knees. Stricken with disbelief and agonizing pain. She looked at the Sith holocron she still clutched in her hand, sighed in defeat, and laid it on the ground. Her fingers wrapped around a durasteel alloy hilt strapped to her belt. She broke it out, holding the metal tube in her weakening hand. Her thumb found the activation switch and a glorious blue blade erupted from the hilt. It was her old shoto saber, given to her by her father.

Tel held the lightsaber over the Sith artifact, briefly contemplating everything that led up to this. Running from the Empire. Embracing the dark side. Being redeemed within the light. She took a few quick breaths and raised her arm, holding the saber above her head. She swung the blue blade downward, stopping just before it met the ruby-red and orange holocron. Tel’Viir let out a somber breath. She deactivated her saber, stood up from her kneeling position on the ground, and retrieved the holocron from where it lay at her feet. And with a limp and a smile, Tel’Viir Vaniir dragged herself back into the stone temple.

\-----

Andromeda sat in one of the cockpit chairs, watching hyperspace blaze in front of her eyes. Out of nowhere, the U-Wing dropped out of light speed, slowing to a stop in the middle of empty space.

“What’s going on, Six?” she asked the droid.

SVL-6 beeped and whirred quizzically.

Suddenly, the ship shuddered violently as it was being pulled by a tractor beam. The U-Wing was being dragged to a much, MUCH larger spacecraft. Andy got up and looked out the window. A grand-looking arrow-shaped ship was pulling it in.

When the U-Wing settled in the tractor beam hangar, Andy hid with SVL-6 and her fathier doll behind a chair in the hull. The ramp opened compliantly. A First Order officer and a handful of storm troopers boarded the ship.

“Come now, republic scum, come on out with identification ready for inspection.”

Andy peeked out from behind the large leisure chair. The officer’s face contorted in a battle between surprise and confusion.

“Aaannd who might you be, little one?” the officer inquired.

“Andromeda, but my friends call me Andy.”

“Well that’s a pretty name, Andromeda. And... do you have a last name, _Andy?_ ”

“Skywalker.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed this little plot line. If you have ANY suggestions, constructive criticism, or questions please feel free to comment! Have a wonderful day :)


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